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Sexual dimorphism of the tibia in contemporary Greeks, Italians, and Spanish: forensic implications

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An Erratum to this article was published on 03 November 2016

Abstract

There are many population-specific studies around the world on sex estimation from skeletal remains. Of the long bones, the tibia has been an important one because it is commonly studied to assess population specificity of a long bone. However, the studies in Europe that use this bone for sex estimation remain limited. The aim of this study is to analyse the tibia in different populations of the southern Europe such as Greece, Italy, and Spain providing standards for sex estimation in a forensic context. In total, we analyzed tibiae of 157 Greek, 190 Italian, and 105 Spanish individuals. Standard osteometric measurements were taken and the data was analyzed using discriminant function statistics. Posterior probabilities were calculated for all produced formulae. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS subroutines. All measurements were significantly different between the sexes in all three populations and in the pooled sample. A discriminant function of the pooled sample for Southern Europeans resulted in about 88 % accuracy using all three variables. Over 43 % of the individuals were correctly classified at a 0.95 threshold. More work should be done including other Southern European populations to this database to further test the applicability of the method.

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Acknowledgments

EK would like to thank Anila Tahiri for her contribution in compiling the database, the Heraklion District Attorney for his permit to study the Greek remains, Mr. C. Kavalos and Mr. K. Maragakis for the demographic and archival information, Messrs S. Kougios and A. Katsounas, autopsy technicians at the Department of Forensic Sciences, University of Crete, for their contribution to cleaning, preserving, and preparing the skeletons for analysis and to Dr. A. Papadomanolakis, Head of the Forensic Department, Ministry of Justice, for providing facilities for the study and storage of the collection. Special thanks to Benjamin Osipov and Helen Langstaff for the linguistic review.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Edinburgh Unit for Forensic Anthropology, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9AG, Scotland, UK

    Elena F. Kranioti

  2. Department of Forensic Sciences, University of Crete Medical School, 71110, Heraklion, Crete, Greece

    Elena F. Kranioti

  3. DSC Medicina Legale - ASL TO4, Rivarolo Canavese, TO, Italy

    Mario A. Apostol

Authors
  1. Elena F. Kranioti
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  2. Mario A. Apostol
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Correspondence to Elena F. Kranioti.

Additional information

An erratum to this article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00414-016-1481-6.

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Kranioti, E.F., Apostol, M.A. Sexual dimorphism of the tibia in contemporary Greeks, Italians, and Spanish: forensic implications. Int J Legal Med 129, 357–363 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-014-1045-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-014-1045-6

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